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The West Bank Archipelago

By Robert Mackey May 7, 2009 8:02 amMay 7, 2009 8:02 am

Julien Bousac/Le Monde diplomatiqueDetail from an illustration in which a fanciful map illustrates the current fragmentation of the West Bank. Areas currently under the control of the Palestinian Authority are represented as islands, divided by areas under Israeli control, represented by the sea.

This week, leading Israeli, Palestinian and American officials have agreed that the creation of a Palestinian state on territory in the West Bank and Gaza is essential to peace in the Middle East. But spend any time looking at a map of the West Bank as it is today, or with any of the many different proposals for how that map might be redrawn to accommodate the aspirations of both Israelis and Palestinians, and it becomes clear why any sensible mapmaker might choose to steer well clear of the challenge of drawing up that state.

But first, let’s see where the agreement lies. On Tuesday in Washington, Vice President Joe Biden reiterated that the Obama administration’s vision for peace in the Middle East includes the creation of a Palestinian state. In a speech to members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Mr. Biden said that Palestinians leaders “must combat terror and incitement against Israel” and Israeli leaders need to accept that “Israel has to work toward a two-state solution.” After the aside, “You’re not going to like my saying this,” Mr. Biden emphasized that, to make space for a Palestinian state, Israel has to “not build more settlements,” in the areas of the West Bank it currently controls.

While Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has not explicitly endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, a report in the Jerusalem Post pointed out that Mr. Biden’s audience agrees with him, “Participants at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference will this week be urging their elected representatives to press President Barack Obama for precisely that.”

The Post added that the group intends to make its support for a two-state solution very clear:

The pro-Israel advocacy group’s annual conference culminates each year with a mass lobbying effort, in which the thousands of participants from across the United States spread out across Capitol Hill for meetings with their respective members of Congress and encourage them to endorse policies and positions that AIPAC believes will advance the American-Israeli interest.

In this year’s lobbying effort, to take place on Tuesday, the AIPAC thousands will be asking their congressmen to sign on to a letter addressed to Obama that explicitly posits the need for a “viable Palestinian state.”

In an interview with The New York Times published on Tuesday, the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, made it clear that his definition of “viable” and Aipac’s are not quite the same. Mr. Meshal said that a Palestinian state should be created on the territory in the West Bank and Gaza that Israel conquered in 1967, which would mean removing hundreds of thousands of Israeli settlers from the West Bank.

Underlining how far that is from Israel’s position, the news agency J.T.A. reported the same day that Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, told Mr. Biden that building on Israeli settlements in the West Bank had to be allowed to continue, since “Israel cannot instruct settlers in existing settlements not to have children or get married.”

So, since Israel has no intention of withdrawing completely from the West Bank, what kind of map might incorporate part of the territory into Israel and still make the remaining part a truly “viable” state?

To get a better idea of where the mapmakers are starting from, take a look at a fanciful map of the West Bank called “L’archipel de Palestine orientale” (“The Archipelago of Eastern Palestine”), drawn by Julien Bousac for the French publication Le Monde Diplomatique, and republished recently on the blog Strange Maps. Mr. Bousac’s imaginary map illustrates how fragmented the areas of the West Bank currently under the control of the Palestinian Authority are by portraying them as islands, divided by areas under Israeli control, which are represented by the sea.

Julien BousacAn imaginary map of the West Bank, showing areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority as an archipelago.

In a post on this imaginary map, the French blogger Gilles Paris shows an excerpt from the real map of the various zones of control in the West Bank produced by the United Nations that Mr. Bousac used as the basis for his drawing. On Thursday, the same U.N. body that produced that map, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, released a report on the “fragmentation” of Bethlehem caused by Israel’s security barrier and settlements. As The Guardian’s Rory McCarthy reports, Israel’s new foreign minister, ­Avigdor Lieberman, “lives in Nokdim, one of the Jewish settlements in the Beth­lehem area.”

In an interview, Mr. Bousac told the blog Strange Maps that his map “is not about ‘drowning’ or ‘flooding’ the Israeli population, nor dividing territories along ethnic lines,” but is simply “an illustration of the West Bank’s ongoing fragmentation based on the (originally temporary) A/B/C zoning which came out of the Oslo process.”

In September 1995 Israel and the Palestinians signed another agreement (often called Oslo II), containing an intricate plan for Israel’s gradual withdrawal from the West Bank (but not any part of Jerusalem). Oslo II set up three West Bank zones. Zone A comprised eight West Bank cities, including Jericho, which was already Arab-controlled. Palestinian authorities would become responsible for internal security and public order, except for parts of Hebron containing Jewish settlers. Zone B consisted of other West Bank towns and villages, where Palestinian police would eventually maintain order but Israel retained overriding authority for security. Zone C included Jewish settlements, unpopulated areas, and lands Israel viewed as strategic. Israel retained full security authority for Zone C, pending “final status” talks.

As Strange Maps explains, “the dotted lines symbolising shipping links, the palm trees signifying protected beach land, and the purple symbols representing various aspects of seaside pleasure” are “totally fanciful but the small blue ships, next to those parts of the map labeled “Zone sous surveillance” (“Zone under surveillance”) have “some bearing on reality, as the locations of the warships match those of permanent Israeli checkpoints.”

What Mr. Bousac’s imaginary map does quite neatly is illustrate that while there are countries in the world made up of pieces of land as divided as those parts of the West Bank currently under Palestinian control, there are none that are not real archipelagos, surrounded by water, rather than by parts of another state.

Since some degree of fragmentation is a feature of many of the maps proposed by Israeli governments in recent years for the shape of a Palestinian state, it seems important to ask what chance a country with this landlocked archipelago shape really has of becoming a viable nation-state. Mr. Bousac’s illustration, like the real map it is based on, also puts some of the failure of the Palestinian Authority to function more like a state since the Oslo Accords were signed into context.

This leaves aside the more obvious problem that the biggest island in a Palestinian archipelago is the Gaza Strip, which is completely cut off from the West Bank. In a fascinating essay in the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National, the Indian writer Pankaj Mishra looked at parallel in the recent histories of Israel and India, and that prompts the thought that we have seen an attempt to create one country out of two isolated territories in the past — in the form of Pakistan, which originally included the mass of territory that eventually broke away to become the separate country of Bangladesh. That history, unfortunately, does little to support the idea that a similarly divided Palestinian state will have an easy time developing into one country.

Another intelligent, thoughtful post. All my carping aside (or perhaps precisely because of the thinking it inspires) this is consistently one of the best features of the NYT. Happy as I am to read the NYT on the web, I have to wonder- why is this not in the print edition? And is there any connection between that and your license to do this level of good work?

As one Israeli government after another clearly demonstrated, they are not interested in peace. What they are interested in is control of the entire historic Palestine. Only need to read latest media report to realize that Prime Minister and Foreign Minister flat out rejected the concept of having peace with Israel’s neighbors

Here’s just a taste of quotes coming out Israeli leaders:
“The Palestinians” would be crushed like grasshoppers … heads smashed against the boulders and walls.”

Yitzhak Shamir, Israeli Prime Minister, in a speech to Jewish settlers New York Times April 1, 1988.

“The thesis that the danger of genocide was hanging over us in June 1967 and that Israel was fighting for its physical existence is only bluff, which was born and developed after the war.”

Israeli General Matityahu Peled, Ha’aretz, 19 March 1972.

“We must do everything to insure they (the Palestinians) never do return.” Assuring his fellow Zionists that Palestinians will never come back to their homes. “The old will die and the young will forget.”

David Ben Gurion, 1948

“We have to kill all the Palestinians unless they are resigned to live here as slaves.”

Chairman Heilbrun of the Committee for the Re-election of General Shlomo Lahat, the mayor of Tel Aviv, October 1983.

Give the Palestinians a real state on some decent land and let’s be done with it.

American interests are not served by allowing successive Israeli governments to abdicate their responsibilities under international law to grant real sovereignty and dignity to the Palestinians. Nor are our interests furthered by allowing authoritarian Arab regimes and extremist Islamist groups to use the Palestinian issue to keep the Arab world mired in stagnation and resentment for the next decade or two.

Enough already. Only the US has the power to force the Israeli state and Palestinian Authority to act. Let’s be done with this, once and for all. No more excuses.

1. There are many countries with islands.
2. Most important: When the “Government” (Hamas in Gaza Called Terrorists by everyone else except the NYT) shows true interest in peace (hey, believe them when they say they want to kill the Jews) there will be no ‘archipelagos;.

Currently these lovely “Islands” have saved thousands of innocent people, civilains including children, and for the self hating, not only Jews, from Suicide Bombers, (See under ” Suicide, Iraq/Afghanistan” ) who alas have to present themselves at so many security barriers.

One more question: Why no clamor for a “Palestinian State” when Egypt & Jordan controlled these very territories B4 1967?

Fascinating article that prompts three observations — first, is is really a valid comparison of the West Bank to Pakistan in 1949 when it was divided into two parts over a thousand miles apart? I think not, despite the Mishra article’s comparison. Second, does anyone really contend that the current map of areas controlled by the Palestinians is what a final Palestinian state will look like? Of course not. And finally, the notion that the 1967 borders will be the borders of a future Israel and Palestine is simply ridiculous. Does anyone really think adjustments will not be made? Of course they will. But the issue is truly whether giving the Palestinians control of the West Bank will mean peace. How can one forget that Israel gave Paletinians control of Gaza, and that led to more attacks on Israel. So many people posting to sites liek this say Israel does not want peace — can anyone point to real Palestinian indications that Palestinians want peace?

The map illustrates a very serious problem in a novel and communicative way. It’s obvious that an independent Palestine will have to include all of the occupied West Bank. Although the Israelis don’t seem to agree with this, the Palestinians, Europeans and most other states in the world certainly think so. I hope the US does as well, though one can never be sure when it comes to Israeli-Palestinian issues that US governments will walk the talk.

What is clear is that a solution that does not involve the entire West Bank will not be viable or acceptable for the Palestinians. Such a solution would definately lead to Israel being branded as an occupying power.

This is a deliberately misleading article. Why not print Olmert’s proposed peace plan–the one the Palestinians walked out on just recently (an event not reported in the New York Times)? When one clicks on the Olmert proposal in the link to your article, one discovers that far from an “archipelago,” the state of Palestine proposed by Israel will be a solid land mass with a corridor between the West Bank and Gaza. Only a tiny number of Jewish settlements close to Jerusalem would remain, and that area would be compensated by land from the state of Israel for a 100% land swap for the 1967 borders. You don’t have to believe me, just click on the map.

The New York Times has clearly decided to misrepresent the history of Israeli peace offers (or fail to report them completely), presumably in order to blame Israel for the lack of peace in the Middle East.
LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: The post above clearly says that “most” not “all” maps put forward by Israeli governments have proposed a degree of fragmentation — and does, as you say, link to a page of maps which support that point. One of the maps there, proposed by an outgoing Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, did suggest a state that was not fragmented. However, as an editorial in The Times noted about the time that map was put forward, there was no serious chance of Mr. Olmert’s plan becoming a reality, since he waited until he was essentially powerless to propose it. Here is how that editorial put that proposal into context:

Ehud Olmert, Israel’s soon to be ex-prime minister, voiced some startling truths this week. He said that in exchange for peace, Israel should withdraw from “almost all” of the West Bank and share its capital city, Jerusalem, with the Palestinians. He also said that as part of a negotiated peace deal with Syria, Israel should be ready to give up the Golan Heights.

It’s frustrating that Mr. Olmert, who is stepping down as prime minister after being accused of corruption, waited so long to say these things. And it is tragic that he did not do more to act on those beliefs when he had real power.

When Yasir Arafat turned down the two state solution composing 97% of the West Bank and Gaza in 2000, he set the course for this to happen.

Now his successors are still driven by even more fear, rhetoric, power-lust and greed nine years down the line. Until the Palestinians actually pursue peace instead of threats, the Israelis have no reason to back off their guard.

As for the maps, where is the one showing the Muslim MidEast with Israel set like a splinter on the edge of the mediterranean?

These maps are deliberately deceptive as to the situation the Israelis are faced with.

The settlements create a nightmarish problem for the Israeli government, one which they are wholly responsible for creating, and one they need to bite the bullet and deal with. An immediate freeze on the establishment and growth of all settlements is not just required, but years overdue, and since the Israeli government doesn’t have the good sense to do it, it’s time for us to step up the pressure on them and make it happen. I don’t think telling them is sufficient; let’s see real and direct links between the freezing of all settlement growth and the funding we provide to Israel, so it’s clear we will not take no for an answer. (As a bonus, this will also help our relations with the Arab countries, but it would be the right thing to do regardless.)

I don’t see a way a final agreement can be reached without ceding some lands currently occupied as settlements to become part of the Palestinian state.

I say this not as a Palestinian or an Arab but as a Jew.

The Palestinians, of course, also have a lot of difficult work ahead, work which they also have insufficient desire to carry out, but we all know where that stands.

In this supposedly enlightened era we have the bizarre phenomenon of the mainstrean media(largely Liberal-left which of course explains it) of defending the right of a nation, Israel, to defend itself against a culture, islamic arab, which is one of the earliest known fascist-totalitarian movements the world has known. Only content to co-exist with non-muslims in the Middle East when they have been reduced greatly in numbers and forced into second-class citizenship by restrictive sharia laws,we have seen in the past 100 years how they have violently resisted the return of the native inhabitants, the Jews, to their historic homeland. It appears the israelis, in the eyes of the Left, have committed the unpardonable sin of defeating their enemies and building a strong nation-state.For the Left all that matters is that the ‘weaker’ party, ie. the arab, is automatically elevated to the altar of their “Victimology’ cult. Never mind their culpability for their present situation, corrupt leaders, fascistic religious culture, all that matters to the NYTimes and its fellow travelers in and out of the Press is that the Arabs, whatever their responsibility for their present situation, are weak and suffering, and therefore must be backed whatever solid, common-sense reason exist for Israel’s policy towards them.

First, the author implicitly blames Israel for absence of a peace agreement. Yet, when interim agreements on the path to peace are made, such as this Oslo II agreement, the author still chastises Israel. Israel has shown a willingness to turn over land and control to the Palestinian Authority, despite the very real security risks that accompany such move. Compare this to the brutal Chinese occupation of Tibet, where China retains control of large swaths of land despite the fact that Tibetans pose no security risk.

The greatest error is in the article’s assumption that in any final peace agreement, the West Bank will be similarly divided. It won’t. No mention is made of the fact that Israel offered 97% of the West Bank (along with all of Gaza) in 2000 at Camp David and Arafat still turned it down. No mention is made of the fact that if Palestinian terrorists would give up their unrelenting effort to kill Israeli civilians and spread fear, there would be no need for Israel to exercise control over any part of the West Bank or to install checkpoints. Israeli control is a product of Palestinian terrorism and nothing else. But you would not get that from reading this article.

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: The author does not blame Israel for absence of a peace agreement and has never, as you claim, chastised Israel. If you can point to any part of the post above that supports these claims, please do. Also, an article in the New York Review of Books by a member of the U.S. negotiating team at Camp David states pretty clearly that idea that Mr. Arafat turned down an offer of 97% of the West Bank is not correct. In “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” Robert Malley, with Hussein Agha, wrote:

“strictly speaking, there never was an Israeli offer. Determined to preserve Israel’s position in the event of failure, and resolved not to let the Palestinians take advantage of one-sided compromises, the Israelis always stopped one, if not several, steps short of a proposal. The ideas put forward at Camp David were never stated in writing, but orally conveyed. … Barak and the Americans insisted that Arafat accept them as general ‘bases for negotiations’ before launching into more rigorous negotiations.

According to those ‘bases,’ Palestine would have sovereignty over 91 percent of the West Bank; Israel would annex 9 percent of the West Bank and, in exchange, Palestine would have sovereignty over parts of pre-1967 Israel equivalent to 1 percent of the West Bank, but with no indication of where either would be.”

Without some sort of map of where the areas to be retained by Israel on the West Bank were, there is no way to say for sure if Mr. Barak’s plan would have created a contiguous or a fragmented Palestinian state.

If the Palestinians had accepted the UN’s 1947 partition plan half as enthusiastically as the Jews did, they would have had their viable state over 60 years ago. Israel is not responsible to give the Palestinians an unlimited number of chances to make up for their own errors in judgment.
LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: Le Monde Diplo’s English site includes a map of the U.N. partition plan that makes clear a Palestinian state created on those lines would have been far larger, and less fragmented, than the recent proposals.

One more question: Why no clamor for a “Palestinian State” when Egypt & Jordan controlled these very territories B4 1967?

That is perhaps one of the most ridiculous (if not downright ignorant) statements I hear from Zionists all the time.
Uh, there was a ‘clamor’ for Palestinian state. You see the Palestinian state is the same place the Zionists destroyed in order to create Israel. Remember the 1948 partition? Yes, the one that split Palestine in two, in order to give Jews escaping atrocities of Europeans (who made up up less than 1/3 of the population at the time) 1/2 of the land. Yes, think about it again. 1/3 of the population gets 1/2, while the other 2/3 get the other 1/2. Uhmm, how does that make sense? Why should Palestinians ever accept that?
As a matter of fact, David Ben Gurion himself agreed:
“If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”

Mr. Mackey, your response about Mr. Olmert’s plan successfully parries the challenge raised above but sidesteps the main issue. The point “David” raised with your article is that it presents the current highly fragmented map as if it’s Israel’s plan for a future peace agreement, naturally prompting the impatience with Israel you can read in several of the other posts. That Olmert’s plan isn’t on the table anymore is true but doesn’t matter; the fact is that every Israeli proposal at past peace summits (and future ones, I venture) has been far more realistic and contiguous than the archipelago farce. But maps and contiguity aside, Israel has learned from its withdrawal from Gaza that it is foolish to offer any further territory unless and until the Palestinians meet their Road Map obligations.

Several posts above reflect the naive understanding that peace in the Middle East could be achieved if Israel withdrew to the 1967 lines. But Arafat and Fatah opened up shop before the 1967 war, and at Wye, Arafat rejected any compromise which didn’t include an Arab “right of return,” which is de facto a guarantee that there will be no Jewish state left to recognize.

Americans want solutions, results, and pronto. But bullying Israel into more capitulations as the other side just smirks and continues the walk and (in Arabic) talk of terror will only sow the next harvest of death.

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: The imaginary map in the blog post above does not, as you say, present “the current highly fragmented map as if it’s Israel’s plan for a future peace agreement.” But it does make the point that a degree of fragmentation is included in most proposed maps for a “final status” agreement, and that this may make it difficult for a viable state to develop on that territory.

This is sheer nonsense. When Palestinians received Gaza as an opportunity to demonstrate how to run a state, the result was oppression of their own and raining thousands of missles on Israel.
Lets do it again with the west bank and see what peaceful surprises the palestinians will have for us this time.

Here’s a question: if AIPAC et al believe that a statelet without territorial contiguity is viable, and that the settlements along with the reticulate settler-only roads and “security checkpoints” should or will be an inevitable part of any peace plan, and that it’s acceptable to offer the Palestinian people such a “state,” then they’ll surely accept this, being ardent universalists:

Make the land swaps land corridors within Israel proper. Make them a series of roads and “security corridors” cutting up Israel into an archipelago much like the one it has chosen to offer the Palestinians. And then give the Palestinians land over aquifers within Israel proper. And then see how the Israeli population reacts.

And a note: discussion of Palestinian terrorism has absolutely zero bearing on the legitimacy of the Palestinian desire for statehood, much like pre-1947 Jewish terrorism, that carried out by the Stern Gang and the Irgun, had absolutely no bearing on the legitimacy of the Jewish desire for a state. It’s simply irrelevant. Israel was founded on a campaign of Jewish terror, as all standard history texts will amply demonstrate. There’s nothing anti-Semitic about pointing this out. There is something philo-Semitic in asserting that Jews, and Jews alone, should have their pre-state terrorism excused while Palestinian terrorism should be condemned or should be used as an excuse to deny them a state.

Why not have a map showing the whole of the Middle East the twenty- one or twenty – two Arab countries occupying one- eighth of the land mass of the Earth, and place it alongside ,eight miles wide at its narrowest point,smaller than New Jersey, Israel?
Why not have another map showing the area of the mandate including present- day Jordan which was in one- day given over to Arab control, in total violation of the Balfour Declaration?
Why not in short show how present Israel is a tiny sliver of land even in terms of its relation to the historical land of Israel?
And after that is done why not consider that there is not a single Palestinian leader of any standing who is willing to recognize ( And this includes PA head Abbas) as the state of the Jewish people?
Once again there will be an attempt to impose upon Israel a political solution which will endanger the existence of the one democratic state in the Middle East.
The United States has been putting pressure on Israel now for over fifty years. The Arabs attack, and lose the war and the U.S. and others force Israeli withdrawal. That has been the pattern.since the Sinai Campaign in 1956. Why doesn’t the Times ask the Obama Administration to pressure the Palestinians and a good share of the Arab world to abandon their campaign of defamation, deligitimization, slander, terror (Suicide, and otherwise) and agree to live in peace with Israel?.Is there any sign that a Palestinian Arab state would be anything other than an Islamist backwater filled with the same kind of anti- American rhetoric that we hear from Gaza and Tehran today?
Why doesn’t the U.S. pressure Hizbollah in Lebanon, and the Palestinians in Gaza both of whom have vowed to destroy Israel, and both of whom are satellites of Iran?
Why is it always ‘pressure on Israel’ and not ‘pressure on the other side’? Why is it always pressure on the friend whose values are similar to one’s own, and not on the Islamist regimes?
Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.

the map as it is shows that Israel in fact turned over total control of 85% or more of the arab population of Judea and Samaria to PA control, and what have they done with it? fostered economic properity, understanding or peace? Gandhi said ” peace begins with the children”. All the PA has done is increase incitement of hate towards Israel and refuse totally to recognize Jewish claims to the State of Israel that includes the biblical lands of Yehuda and Somron, referred to as the West Bank., that goes back to the time of the jewish temple, over two thousand years. Thousands of years before the advent of Islam, there was a Jewish state. The League of Nations recognized that reality when it proclaimed the Mandate that included the so called West Bank and what the British created , which is now known as Jordan, the defacto “Palestinian state..look at there flag.. What so many fail to realize is that there was never a so called Palestinian state and it is only the Jews in our own misguided way that has offered these Arabs a seperate state that can never be viable , no matter how continguous the parts and that would continue to be an overwheming security threat if Israel returns to what Abba Eban described as Auschwitz borders.. No Arab country advocated for a”Palestinian state before 1967. They advocated for the destruction of the Jewish state. Sadll little has changed, because a state isn’ as important to them as hate, Hateing the Jews..

Sorry, Lede, your bias is showing (in 15). You pull out the quote from a relatively low-level official, Rob Malley, to say the breakdown at Camp David was not Arafat’s fault, but you ignore the more senior and authoritative testimony by Special Envoy Dennis Ross: “The ideas were presented on December 23 by the president, and they basically said the following: On borders, there would be about a 5 percent annexation in the West Bank for the Israelis and a 2 percent swap. So there would be a net 97 percent of the territory that would go to the Palestinians….So the Palestinians would have in the West Bank an area that was contiguous. Those who say there were cantons, completely untrue. It was contiguous.” //www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,50830,00.html “Arafat came to the White House on January 2,” Ross continued. “Met with the president, and I was there in the Oval Office. He said yes, and then he added reservations that basically meant he rejected every single one of the things he was supposed to give…. every single one of the ideas that was asked of him he rejected.”

The “islands” were Area A in the Oslo Accord Maps and the Pal’s were to secure more and more land from Area’s B and C. But Arafat and the Palestinian intifada froze the map.

LEDE BLOGGER RESPONSE: You jump to the conclusion that by not mentioning a book I haven’t read, I am biased. The information you add to the debate from that source is welcome, but your accusation that I did not quote Mr. Ross for reasons of bias is incorrect. Mr. Ross’s statements do not really contradict Mr. Malley’s in that, as Mr. Malley wrote, the ideas were not presented by Prime Minister Barak as a concrete proposal, which is why there is no map for everyone to look at now, but as “ideas,” conveyed by President Clinton. Mr. Ross also says here that the idea was to put 95% of the West Bank under Palestinian control, not 97%.

Some say that Israel offered the Palestinians 90 percent of the West Bank at Oslo. Leaving aside the fact that they made no such offer, as the then-Israeli Foreign Minister confirms, this shows what Israel really offered the Palestinians: something guaranteed to prevent a real state.

And when they did give some parts of the West Bank to the Palestinians, Israel promptly sabotaged the PA by denying it taxes Israel collected on the PA’s behalf, tightening the blockade and the occupation restrictions, and publicly humiliating the PA leaders.

Comment no. 2 by Sherif in New York shows the real Israeli attitude.

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